Paul Shaw

I have not had time to elucidate my reasons for each of these selections so feel free to contest them. (I have left out items already included on the top 10 type events such as the Roger Excoffon book and the U&lc PDFs that could also fit here.) But here they are: Vignelli Center...

1 – The Arrival of Webfonts 2010 will be remembered as the year that the Internet moved beyond Arial, Verdana, Georgia and the other web-friendly fonts offered by Microsoft. The major type foundries finally figured out several ways to offer fonts optimized for use on the web that are (fairly) secure from piracy, thus...

The London-based design studio A2/SW/HK has recently launched its own type foundry called A2-Type. The 15 fonts in the initial specimen book are largely derived from design projects that partners Scott Williams and Henrik Kubel have done since they formed the studio a decade ago. (The exceptions are A2 Klampenborg, designed by Kubel in...

Ever since the 2008 election, the design community has been delirious that the Obama campaign used Gotham by Hoefler & Frere-Jones. It has become received wisdom that this was the most adventurous font decision ever made by a political campaign and further proof that Obama deserved to win. McCain’s choice of Optima, on the other...

Chester has released Arbor, a fresh interpretation of Caslon Italian, one of the most bizarre slab serif types of the 19th century. The design, originally created for the The New York Times Magazine, dispenses with the irrational logic of its ancestor, concentrating instead on making a consistent and aesthetically pleasing reverse-weight Egyptian. Although its...

Lowell Bodger, who died this past January 26 at the age of 65, was a typographer, letterpress printer, planetary cartographer, and experimental filmmaker. A selection of his films (Wave Symmetries, 1971; Favorable Conditions, 1973; A Recent Animation, 1974 and others) will be shown tomorrow, September 16, at Anthology Film Archives (32 Second Avenue, New...

The letters that inspired Gotham are not unique to Manhattan or New York City. Similar, though not entirely identical, capitals can be found in cities across America and Europe. Beginning in the mid-1920s, they appeared first in posters (see the work of A.M. Cassandre, E. McKnight Kauffer, and Austin Cooper) and then in signage—from...

In 1998, in the middle of millennium-induced listmaking mania, I wrote a short piece for Letterspace, the newsletter of the Type Directors Club, on the “top 100 typefaces of all time.” The list was based on the historical, technological, or theoretical importance of each design rather than its aesthetics. Initially, the list caused barely...

Marcus Leis Allion, co-designer of Acute Priori, reviewed in Hot Type (June 2010), has written to point out that the design was inspired more by the abstract/mathematical work of Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd (b. 1915) than by the illustrative work of M.C. Escher. And here’s more information on Reutersvärd, the “father of impossible figures”...